It Was Okay
a summertime micro-fiction by Stefanie Barnfather (2025)
She and He had lain on the beach for an hour: side by side on oversized striped towels, large and lean.
She read a magazine article about Super Foods. Blueberries were cell hydrators, apparently. He read a book about the Enron scandal. “The author included way too much detail,” He complained, halfway through. “I don’t care about the brother’s second cousin twice removed who once glanced at the office building where everything went down.”
Nothing was going down on the beach. Vacationers relaxed in rows, baking under the sun, glistening with oil. Unmoving and unaware of the passage of precious time.
She rolled her magazine into a tube and swatted Him lightly on his suncreened shoulder. “I’m sick of lying here.” Tossing the tube to the side, She grabbed a frisbee from their beach bag. “Let’s go. Let’s throw.”
“Now?” He glanced at the rows of quiet piles of sunning flesh. “Here?”
“It’s okay.” As She stood small stones stuck to her calves. “It’s our beach, too.”
He joined Her by the water’s edge, tossing and grabbing the frisbee as they ran along the shore. Dark brown and dotted with splashes of shells, the tide-exposed expanse of runway revealed their footprints as they cavorted, leapt, twirled, and played—like nobody was watching.
Nobody was watching. The rows of sun tanners didn’t shift or squirm or even seem to see that something had changed on their somnolent stretch of sand. They lay with their heads under fashionable sunhats, snoozing and still.
Except for one groove-lined woman who lifted her sunhat’s brim to beam at She and He: at their zip and zest and unfashionable joie de vivre.
With one hand gripping the frisbee as She prepared to fling, her eyes caught the woman’s—and She felt her heart stop. But it was a momentary murmur, one caused by the sudden arrival of possible embarrassment. The shame of being alive.
But only momentary. And only possible. The woman merely beamed more brightly.
Her shame evaporated like the water rising from the sweltering shoreline. She hurled the frisbee into the air. He caught it. Easily.
“I’m exhausted,” He said, tossing the frisbee on the sand as he made his way to their towels. “But that was fun. Let’s grab lunch, then come back later—when everyone has left and we can really run.”
And they did come back, after the rows of relaxers returned to their restless homes. And they did really run, now that nobody was actually watching.
And it was okay. It was okay.
